A world of R&D: what changed since the 80s?

In
three decades the world can change of a lot. And it did: Cold War ended and
several others started; new nations were born while globalisation kicked in.
Yet one thing didn't seem to stop: growth of research. In
the history of mankind there has never been as much scientific research as
there is now, with millions of scientists and several thousands of institutions
working every day. But if growth of science never stopped, it sure changed how science
is done and – as important – how it is funded. OECD,
in its “Science and Technology Indicators”, gathered data that goes back to 1981; they allow us to see, country by
country, how much governments and industry invested in science. We present them
in an interactive map.

Historically
most countries have been pretty clear about science: either they like it or
they don't very much. Expenditures in research rarely changed dramatically. One
notable exception is South Korea, that from 2003 started to invest massively in
this field. Today 4% of its GDP is directed towards scientific resarch: only
Israel – a much smaller nation – devolves so many of its resources to science. Germany
experience the opposite phenomenon: funds growth slowed from 1988. Yet today
they are their peak, at 2,88% of GDP.

At
the same time not all investments are created equal. There are countries like
Argentina in which most of the funding comes from governmental sources and
others where it's industry that pushes for science. Since
1981 the latter has become more common: industry-funded research grew generally
at a much faster pace pretty in several countries. That is not the case for
Italy and Spain, in which there is not much difference, in quantity, between
the two funding sources.

Note: all data is provided by OECD. A spreadsheet with all
relevant information has been compiled, and it's available here.